Caretakers of the Environment International is an international organization which aims to promote sustainable development education for youth. They believe that the best way to promote a sustainable development education for youth is through having students meet and work together. So, they organize annual international conferences that act as a platform for teachers and students to exchange concerns, ideas, strategies, actions and projects in the field of environmental education.

As you all know, the 3rd of May is the World Press Freedom Day. Since the European Parliament announced 2012 to be the “European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations“ and 29th of April each year as the “EU-day of Solidarity Between Generations“ we thought it would make a great opportunity to make a common Loesje action day. We would like to invite you all to do inter-generational Loesje creative text writing workshops, mixing young and old people, on the 3rd of May! We can share our results online, with pictures and posters created!

Here are some tips on how to get people with different ages together:

* There could be reading or writing clubs, where you could contact
older people who are keen on writing.

* Schools or youth clubs to find younger people.

From Hanneke, Loesje the Netherlands, who has lead two projects about inter-generational Loesje creative text writing in the Netherlands we got the tip that it is good to mix the group so that the participants don't sit with their own age. The outcome of these workshops have been great, and the feedback good. A Loesje book with the results of the inter-generational writings of the latest project will be published in the Netherlands later this year!

So, sharpen your pencils, gather people from all generations, and let's make a common action on the 3rd of May!

Sunday 19th of February, in the framework of the Communi-action project, a Loesje training was held in Berlin. Around fifteen people, interessed in learning how to give a Loesje workshop were present.

The day was composed of a session to define what is a good workshop, a creative text-writing workshop in German and in English, a session to learn to present Loesje and two final editing sessions: one in German and one in English.

In this day, two series of Loesje posters were created one in German and one in English.

For example:

- EVEN THE BEES GET LOST IN BETWEEN THE FLOWERS SOMETIMES

- HOW MUCH GOOD FOOD CAN GROW IN THE SPACE OF A MCDONALD'S

- LUFT IST NICHT UMSONST / UMSONST

Check out the Poster Archive, the new posters are coming soon in English and in German!

Call for partners of Training Course with Loesje FI and Loesje Armenia

2nd -8th of May, 2012 in Armenia

In every country and culture, gender matters. People are not able to live their personal liberties, as they are being limited in different ways by the norm for gender. Many of us follow the rules of the norm so that we will not be bullied or punished in other ways for being different or wanting something else. Many of us have accepted the norm, and are gladly going along with it, but have never been encouraged to listen to our own wishes. In different ages, we have usually different problems. For youth who are just beginning to find their identity and stand on their feet, it is hard to be different from what parents, friends and school tell them to be, and stand up to the people you are dependent on.

With this training aimed at youth workers, we try to deal with the question of norm around gender, but also other norms, which are closely linked with gender. These other norms are class, sexuality or ethnicity. All of these other categories change the conditions for a person, not only gender. Therefore, if we want freedom and peace for all, we need to also take these other categories of oppression in consideration when we study the question of gender inequality. In this matter, we will take a closer look at the term “intersectionality”, a concept used more frequently by NGO's.

Hopefully, the youth workers will hopefully pass the questioning of stereotypes and prejudices in their work. We will share knowledge from our different situations and backgrounds. The norms are different in different regions. How is the norm around gender displayed specifically in our countries? What messages are youth getting from us and rest of society? We will try different method books that have been developed around gender, such as those in the Compass and methods directly connected with gender from an intersectional point of view. We will also take a very close look at ourselves. What actually are our opinions? What other opinions are there? How do we ourselves sustain or break the norm?

The objectives of the project are: - To understand the concept gender, how it is related to other norms such as age, class and ethnicity, - to learn concrete methods and tools for questioning norms, - to encourage people to stand for their rights, - to share experiences around the subject between European and Partner countries, - to promote Loesje methods,

Content

The training will contain the following workshops:

Norm-breaking workshops:

What does the norm around gender look like? How does it affect us personally? And how do we think it affects the youth we work with? How can gender be related to other oppressions, like if you are a woman in a certain age, class, skin colour or ethnicity and so on? We will use methods with intersectionality perspective and that also deals with power theory. In this section we are going to go through different method books

Questions for participants to discuss that will be given before and during the training:

What are the laws and statistics in our countries, compared with the charter of Human Rights? What do we encounter as youth leaders, when it comes to gender inequality? How should we change our methods when we work with youth? Through different interactive exercises we will try to answer these questions. We will collect the results and share it with each other after the training.

Loesje Creative Text-writing:

One day of text-writing sessions to create posters around gender.

Team-building:

Ice Breaking and get to know each other

Energisers

Tour in local area.

Evening activity

Practical details

Finances: The participants will have to pay 30% of their travelling costs, and insurance. Everything else will be provided by the project.

If you find the project interesting for your organisation, then please send in the attached Preliminary Agreement signed and scanned to safaa@loesje.org at the latest on the 30th of January. And also the original by post to:

Dates: 28.07 - 08.08.2011

Place: Tronle, Bertogne, Belgium

Loesje’s Summercamp 2012 will happen in Belgium from the 28th of July until the 8th of August. Let’s all come together and discover a bit more about this country. Because yes, Belgium hold the world record of the longest period without an official government, but it is also the country of tremendous inventions (as roller skates), three official languages available (Dutch, French and German), delicious food (chocolate, biers and waffles) and, last but not least, European Union capital town.

The gîte Le Baty is located in a tiny village called Tronle, near Bertogne in South East Wallonia in a region known for it nice forests and woods. We will be 60 km away from France and Germany, 10 km away from Luxembourg and 80 km away from the Netherlands. Pretty central for such a tiny village!

At the gîte, we will find some habitable rooms, a big cooking area, a bar, 10 cosy sleeping rooms, a big play field, a piano, showers, toilets, an indoor fireplace and special area to play pétanque. There will be place to build up tents and woods all around.

The program will be similar to last year's. Loads of interesting workshops - School of Freedom - where everyone can teach and show whatever he/she/whatever can or wants to share and people can attend whatever workshop they feel like to. In the evenings we will have either various, entertaining programs or some of our legendary parties, or likewise both of them, or free time, secret meetings, secret parties, secret other stuff…

We can suggest various waysfor traveling to Belgium

>Hitchhiking: Free the hippie inside of you, grab a flower and go for it. Loads of long-distance truckers on the road. (Beware of burglary though - make sure that while they are stealing your bag, you steal their truck!)

>Bike: Well: all depend from where you come! From Benelux countries, lands are flat and easy to ride, it could be a great summer trip…

>Plane: The fastest and environmentally most polluting way. We will be equal distance from Brussels and Köln/Cologne about 150km.

>Carsharing: Look on the web to find people offering seats in their cars on Carpooling.com . There is possibility to search for “international” travels, from the Netherlands to Belgium for example :)

> Car: You could put up a group to travel there by car.

We are going to figure out how to get from the bigger cities around to the gite. We will either rent small buses or request one of the Tel-Bus.

We really hope a lot of people can't resist the urge to come and we're looking forward to enjoying an unforgettable time with you guys! See you all in the summer! More information are following on this website, so keep tuned!

All pictures ( except the map ) are authored by the team of Le Gite Le Baty.